3 ms·

Yes but there IS a legal definition for reporting vs opinion and it is easy enough to put an article in Column Op-Ed instead of Column New Info

by sova 9y ago

jfindley 9y ago
Many of the most important issues (e.g. current crisis in Rohingya) are in environments where there is no such thing as absolute truth. To pick one example, in a conflict, it's very rare that any two independent sources can even agree on the number of casualties (much less on whose side they were, what the cause of death was, etc), and what the western world tends to treat as some of the most reputable sources explicitly ignore any reports not written in English. Which is obviously not useful when many of these conflicts occur in regions where English is not a primary language. We can define the boundary between fact and opinion all we want, but in the real world it's very rarely so black and white. Sure, pieces that are merely commentary/opinion should be labelled as such, but in all reputable news outlets already do this. I've yet to see a single useful solution to this issue that stands up when there's simply no practical way of accurately establishing what the truth really is.
comex 9y ago
Well, I don't think it matters which "column" an entire article goes in. Op-eds usually contain a variety of factual statements which are used to support the subjective parts, and those statements still need to be true. Indeed, most 'less professional' websites make no distinction between "straight reporting" and opinion - in effect, all their articles are op-eds - but it's precisely those sites that are most likely to spread false information and thus most need to be fact-checked. It's true that courts need to distinguish fact from non-actionable opinion in defamation/libel cases (at the level of individual statements, not entire articles) - not to mention that almost all court decisions rely on the judge evaluating competing factual claims, to some extent, even though that's theoretically the job of the jury. The judicial branch does do at least a somewhat better job at staying neutral, serious, fact-based, compared to other branches - but far, far from ideal. I suppose the idea of a government fact-checking agency sounds slightly less terrible if you make it part of that branch (though that would be an odd arrangement, since it would seem to fall under the broad umbrella of 'regulatory agency' that you usually see in the executive branch). But still terrible IMO. After all, US defamation law grants authors an enormous amount of leeway when it comes to issues of public concern, and that's by design, to prevent it from being used to censor valuable speech even given biased judges. I'll concede that true "fake news" is often a straightforward matter of totally made-up claims, to the point that the people named probably could sue the publisher for defamation and win, under the existing system - albeit at the cost of money, effort, and potentially triggering the Streisand effect. If that's all this hypothetical agency cared about, it could operate relatively safely. But that wouldn't be good enough. There's a broad spectrum of claims that aren't clear-cut enough to be actionable - and are protected by the First Amendment - yet are still misleading enough to merit poor ratings from fact checkers. The agency could try to apply a stricter truth standard in its advisory labels than that used in defamation law, arguing that the First Amendment is less of a concern when speech isn't actually being censored. It'd still face constitutional challenges, but it might survive them. But "stricter truth standard" is just another way of saying the agency needs to be able to make subjective decisions. Not too subjective - nowhere near the caricature "disagree = false" that I've seen from some critics of fact checkers on HN (never mind the president) - but not 100% objective either. I think it's important for fact checkers to be able to exercise such discretion, because politicians are very, very skilled at muddying the waters. But I also think I'd prefer to keep that power out of the hands of the government, no matter which part of it or in what form.
dragonwriter 9y ago
> Yes but there IS a legal definition for reporting vs opinion Please cite the applicable law. (There's clearly a legal difference—relevant for, e.g., defamation claims—between fact and opinion claims, but that operates at a much smaller unit than an entire article, which can contain both kinds of claims.)

Yes but there IS a legal definition for reporting vs opinion and it is easy enough to put an article in Column Op-Ed instead of Column New Info

by sova 9y ago

Yes but there IS a legal definition for reporting vs opinion and it is easy enough to put an article in Column Op-Ed instead of Column New Info

jfindley 9y ago

Many of the most important issues (e.g. current crisis in Rohingya) are in environments where there is no such thing as absolute truth. To pick one example, in a conflict, it's very rare that any two independent sources can even agree on the number of casualties (much less on whose side they were, what the cause of death was, etc), and what the western world tends to treat as some of the most reputable sources explicitly ignore any reports not written in English. Which is obviously not useful when many of these conflicts occur in regions where English is not a primary language. We can define the boundary between fact and opinion all we want, but in the real world it's very rarely so black and white. Sure, pieces that are merely commentary/opinion should be labelled as such, but in all reputable news outlets already do this. I've yet to see a single useful solution to this issue that stands up when there's simply no practical way of accurately establishing what the truth really is.

comex 9y ago

Well, I don't think it matters which "column" an entire article goes in. Op-eds usually contain a variety of factual statements which are used to support the subjective parts, and those statements still need to be true. Indeed, most 'less professional' websites make no distinction between "straight reporting" and opinion - in effect, all their articles are op-eds - but it's precisely those sites that are most likely to spread false information and thus most need to be fact-checked. It's true that courts need to distinguish fact from non-actionable opinion in defamation/libel cases (at the level of individual statements, not entire articles) - not to mention that almost all court decisions rely on the judge evaluating competing factual claims, to some extent, even though that's theoretically the job of the jury. The judicial branch does do at least a somewhat better job at staying neutral, serious, fact-based, compared to other branches - but far, far from ideal. I suppose the idea of a government fact-checking agency sounds slightly less terrible if you make it part of that branch (though that would be an odd arrangement, since it would seem to fall under the broad umbrella of 'regulatory agency' that you usually see in the executive branch). But still terrible IMO. After all, US defamation law grants authors an enormous amount of leeway when it comes to issues of public concern, and that's by design, to prevent it from being used to censor valuable speech even given biased judges. I'll concede that true "fake news" is often a straightforward matter of totally made-up claims, to the point that the people named probably could sue the publisher for defamation and win, under the existing system - albeit at the cost of money, effort, and potentially triggering the Streisand effect. If that's all this hypothetical agency cared about, it could operate relatively safely. But that wouldn't be good enough. There's a broad spectrum of claims that aren't clear-cut enough to be actionable - and are protected by the First Amendment - yet are still misleading enough to merit poor ratings from fact checkers. The agency could try to apply a stricter truth standard in its advisory labels than that used in defamation law, arguing that the First Amendment is less of a concern when speech isn't actually being censored. It'd still face constitutional challenges, but it might survive them. But "stricter truth standard" is just another way of saying the agency needs to be able to make subjective decisions. Not too subjective - nowhere near the caricature "disagree = false" that I've seen from some critics of fact checkers on HN (never mind the president) - but not 100% objective either. I think it's important for fact checkers to be able to exercise such discretion, because politicians are very, very skilled at muddying the waters. But I also think I'd prefer to keep that power out of the hands of the government, no matter which part of it or in what form.

dragonwriter 9y ago

> Yes but there IS a legal definition for reporting vs opinion Please cite the applicable law. (There's clearly a legal difference—relevant for, e.g., defamation claims—between fact and opinion claims, but that operates at a much smaller unit than an entire article, which can contain both kinds of claims.)